PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[JaxTeller718]

I noticed the trickle was in there on Monday. We discussed and it was removed in b198.

My hero! I have not gotten to a horde night yet on 199. Thank you for that. You guys are slamming it out of the park. This has been the most amazing experience in Alpha since I picked this game up. You and the team did a really great job, just wanted to stress that even through some of my grumblings before release.

It was well worth the wait.

 

[faatal]

@madmole; @faatal,
For the first time, my FPS dropped below 28 since lowering resolution... all the way down to 4-7 FPS.

I'm not sure the rhyme or reason, but I recently added a forge then later a workbench within a day of each other. Have used both with no issues. Suddenly, frame dropped. Shortly after I heard a wondering horde. Figured that was the cause. Dispatched the horde with a bit more challege chugging at the sluggish frame rates. FPS was still down! I was in the midst of building my bicycle (now completed), but nothing was currently being built when the lag hit. Rode my new bicycle away from my POI base and FPS was back up to 35-40. Once I came back to my base, FPS lowered, but not nearly as bad, 12-14.

Is there a known issue that would cause this?

I don't know of anything that would cause that. I'd try exiting and running the game again. Next a PC reboot.

 

[faatal]

My hero! I have not gotten to a horde night yet on 199. Thank you for that. You guys are slamming it out of the park. This has been the most amazing experience in Alpha since I picked this game up. You and the team did a really great job, just wanted to stress that even through some of my grumblings before release.
It was well worth the wait.

I also updated the logging, so it is very clear what group it is on, the counts, what zombies spawned, etc. You can't debug well with poor information.

 

[Jugginator]

I agree too. The trickle at the end has always been disappointing for me as well and I hope they do fix it.
It should work still doing it the old way, from what i can see in that modlet the structure has remained the same.

Nice -- I'll prob do the changes here soon and I'll report if it doesnt work. Yeah.. lol. Granted the AI on the ones that did swarm in certainly did a number on the house haha. Smart little buggers, they are. They even bypassed a 3-stack door airlock by going through the walls on the side. Still, my friend and I were sitting there at night walking around looking for the hordes... eventually frowns on our faces. All those arrows gathered and ammo bought from the traders went unused for a couple hours haha.

 

[Doctor3D]

@Fatal or whom it may concern

The Tree Graphic setting affects the LOD distance on the player crafted wood window. It could be other items as well. Lower tree settings will cause said window to disappear at only a few feet in front of you- higher tree settings will just increase the distance before it disappears.

 

[wolffblood]

Zombies take 50% fall damage capped at 33% of max health. Per fall.

So have like a stair stepper kind of pit fall, hehe. Or have it drop them once, follow you up a ramp, drop to another, follow to last, drop. Dead. That'd... take some work and making sure zombies don't dig... hehe

 

[chikorina]

My friend on a dedicated server has a problem where he can't open chests or anything else anymore. He was doing a quest with me and he was inside the building when I started the quest. After that he was not able to open anything. He tried logging out and back again, he tried starting the game again too. Please help:upset:

 

[CplCritter]

I don't know of anything that would cause that. I'd try exiting and running the game again. Next a PC reboot.

That did the trick. I just exited the game for a bit. Thanks!

Update - Everything is fine, but my storage containers are back to being low res. Seems to happen from time to time. No biggie.

 

[Aldranon]

Reviews for 7 Days (last 30 days) just went up from 62% positive to 76% positive

The improved score is well deserved. Playing "Dead is Dead" the game is scary now and exciting! There are places I just don't go, just like in New York City at night.

That its not yet at 100% is also well deserved. Poor game balance, restrictive play (you MUST kill zombies) and poor rng mixer.

That the problems will be resolved is also a certainty as we're talking about TFP. They have never let us down.

 

[chikorina]

oops, that wasn't for me. Started the server again worked.

 

[Gnomaana]

I noticed the trickle was in there on Monday. We discussed and it was removed in b198.

The trickle is gone but the spawn still stops. Just finished the first horde night with my son earlier and not a single zombie spawned after midnight.

 

[ahulme]

Playing since 2013 and this is your first post ? WOW...

I'm pretty sure this is not caused because the code got slower, but because POIs having much more densely placed blocks and more zombies. I recall the old hospital had a lot of empty space and not that many detail blocks. We need additional optimizations like culling to try and get some of this performance back, which was lost to new content, not bad code.

Thanks Faatal. I understand. Please note that FPS drops occur significantly anywhere on the map when the Zed count increases to ~20 or more in a concentrated area (e.g. horde nights being a prime example). This feeling is shared/experienced by many players, not just me. Obviously FPS drops are to be expected, however it has been somewhat of an issue even in previous iterations. I look forward to the day that the game runs consistently smoothly, within reason, and without expecting perfection from the end of the consumer. I'm sure it's nothing to do with code, only new content and AI tracking systems etc. Also, please work out fixing the speed with which the stone axe delays/pauses between swings!!

 

[wolffblood]

The improved score is well deserved. Playing "Dead is Dead" the game is scary now and exciting! There are places I just don't go, just like in New York City at night.
That its not yet at 100% is also well deserved. Poor game balance, restrictive play (you MUST kill zombies) and poor rng mixer.

That the problems will be resolved is also a certainty as we're talking about TFP. They have never let us down.

Well, you would kill the hordes as is, blood moon hordes, and all the zombies in POIs that I go in to loot. I've not once had to track down zombies for lvls, I get them as I play. Doesn't seem that restricting to me. Now if you are the person to build only, don't do any clearing of POIs and try to avoid zombies at all costs, then yeah, I can see it restricting. Thing is, that really hinders even building since you need to get things from POIs to get higher.

 

[CplCritter]

Noted, don't cut through your farm on a damn bicycle unless you want to lose your crops lol. Not shooting for reality in the game huh? I beg to differ. Serves me right I guess... Gotta learn the new rules some how.

Edit -

WTF... Don't try to park your bike on a hill either. A ghost will start joyriding while you run behind to try to catch it. Is this for real? Comical and frustrating at the same time.

 

[1__ViPeR__1]

i waited so long for news on a17 and totally missed it going into experimental. nice surprise today indeed.

 

[Dauthiatull]

Noted, don't cut through your farm on a damn bicycle unless you want to lose your crops lol. Not shooting for reality in the game huh? I beg to differ. Serves me right I guess... Gotta learn the new rules some how.
Edit -

WTF... Don't try to park your bike on a hill either. A ghost will start joyriding while you run behind to try to catch it. Is this for real? Comical and frustrating at the same time.

Next patch. Parking break mod for bicycle

 

[faatal]

@Fatal or whom it may concern
The Tree Graphic setting affects the LOD distance on the player crafted wood window. It could be other items as well. Lower tree settings will cause said window to disappear at only a few feet in front of you- higher tree settings will just increase the distance before it disappears.

Yes, it is changing the global LOD bias, which effects other stuff too.

 

[faatal]

The trickle is gone but the spawn still stops. Just finished the first horde night with my son earlier and not a single zombie spawned after midnight.

It is not infinite zombies during the time. Time only effects the stopping of the remaining zombies once 4am arrives. Low game stages don't spawn that many zombies.

 

[CplCritter]

An electrical part needed to make an electrical part? Just noticed that in the recipes when looking up what can be made from brass. Is this known?

 

[Mechanimal]

So, building, by far one of my favorite aspects to this game. The new/changed way most wooden frames are gated behind not only the workbench, but also the tablesaw, is something I am still adapting to. Not such a huge deal since I can, and occasionally did before, make most of what I used to in scrap anyway. It just feels weird having such a plethora of early game basic blocks now be locked behind multiple level 20+ perks. I would rough out almost every build in wood or scrap frames, then try to wait for concrete and just swap each one with wet block, loved the method. I'd use rebar but the choice of shapes is so low by comparison that I tend to ignore the category altogether as a result. Just some feedback.

Anyway, I will adapt and look forward to doing so, heck now I may just do scrap>flagstone and up from there, see how that method goes, but here's the thing I am STUCK on... I unlocked level one of Advanced Engineering, made my workbench, but it STILL says I need to unlock the recipe for the tablesaw, even thought that same unlock states that the tablesaw is part of it. I needs ma shape option fix, am I missing something or is this a bug?